Muslim women are assumed to have passively accepted their bleak lives, either because of what seems to be no alternative or because they seem to have no means to fight this misinterpretation or incomplete understanding which was prescribed by God and administered by their male overseers.
Images which characterize Muslim women as oppressed victims with no rights are tenacious: even the reality that women have been elected as leaders of the most populous Muslim states, that is Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, has not shaken this universal assumption.
The contradictory reported trends and developments in these societies, and the diversity in practices and beliefs among Muslim societies and communities, strongly urge observers to question the extremely simplistic assumption that Islam is the source of oppression of Muslim women.
Despite its ubiquity, the category of Muslim women implies a false homogeneity. As a classification, it is vague and ahistorical. However, due to the frequency of its historical use and misuse, the abstraction “Muslim women” has evolved to be a political rather than analytical concept, now used by opposing and/or diverse factions. In the media, which cater to the dominant Western cultures, it is used to imply the many kinds of women’s oppression.
For your own perspective, please take the time to completely review this posting and judge for yourself.
FEMALE MUSLIM ATHELETES THAT YOU MAY OR MAY NOT KNOW…
There are 500 million women living in Muslim societies and communities; the large majority live in Asia and Africa. In fact, Indonesia, with 200 million people, is the largest Muslim nation in the world, making nonsense of the stereotype that Muslim are primarily Arab, or generally Middle Eastern. Contrary to the modern image of Islam as an unyielding religion, historically it has demonstrated considerable flexibility in adapting to diverse cultures.
All in all, this posting was presented to simply express that Muslim women are generally not oppressed; no more so than some American women are, who are often discriminated against because of there race, culture and gender (viz. look at wages, job promotions etc.).